At Sea

July 7^th, 2025

We were still in fog when we woke up, and the foghorn continued its mournful warning all morning.

For half of the guests on board this is their last day before disembarking in New York tomorrow.

So it really wasn’t smart of me to decided that today was the day to visit the launderette. The launderette is at the back of the ship, after the D lifts. Walking back and forth is great exercise, which is good because there was no Zumba again today.

There are 2 washing machines and 2 dryers, which really isn’t much for the whole of deck 8, but luckily, I was able to use one soon after my arrival. I timed the completion of the washing perfectly as when I went back the machine was on its final spin, and someone was taking their dry clothes out of the dryer so I was able to make the transfer. This is all too easy I thought.

As it turned out the other dryer was out of service, but you wouldn’t know it because the sign was actually in the dryer. A lady doing her ironing and I tried to affix the sign to the outside but that just wouldn’t work, so we left it inside.

We both remembered the potentially apocryphal story of the woman who pocketed one of the out of service signs  and then when she wanted to do her laundry she would place the sign on the washer or dryer so no one else would use it.

In case she was on board with us we tried to get the dryer to spring into action, but it was no use, it really was out of service.

I left my laundry tumbling in the dryer and set a timer to return 10 minutes before it would be done.

At the appropriate time I returned to the launderette only to find my still very wet clothes on the ironing board. I questioned the couple who were standing by the dryer as to how my wet clothes had exited the dryer and had ended up on the ironing board, but they shrugged and told me they didn’t speak English. I wanted to know why someone (they?) had taken may wet clothes out of the dryer, but they clearly were not going to explain this to me, or explain how come their clothes were now happily tumbling along on the path to dryness.

There were several other folks in the laundry but they had just arrived. They were in the  queue to use the one functioning dryer. They indicated that I could join the back of the queue.

I was about to protest, but then I thought maybe they were all disembarking tomorrow and needed to pack their dry clothes. It would have been mean spirited of me to insist I used the dryer as I was actually there first, so I gathered up the wet clothes and harrumphed back to our stateroom.

In a few minutes our stateroom was redecorated with damp clothing. Not a great look, but we aren’t expecting anyone to come over, and it did look kind of funky.

By the afternoon the fog had lifted and the sun was shining through. It was too windy to go to the deck 8 pool, so we went to the Pavilion pool.

Despite the fact that there are many children on this voyage, and most of them seemed to be at the pool, it wasn’t too noisy, even with table tennis and baggo going on,

and we had a very pleasant afternoon. I have a feeling that this is where we will spend a lot of the crossing.

Brian went for his daily walk around the Promenade deck. I declined to join him. I felt I had been able to get my steps in by walking backwards and forwards to the launderette..

As it was the last evening for this New England and Canada voyage, the evening show was before dinner – it was a double feature of the 2 very talented performers, the cellist and the acrobatic pianist.

We were 8 again at dinner – Diane joined us, but remained quite distant so I still don’t know her story. The rest of us had a great time. I sat thinking that here I was upset that we didn’t have a table for 2, and now one of the best things about the cruise are our tablemates.

After dinner we all went to the Queens Room to watch the performance by the Carole King band, You’ve Got a Friend. They did a good show – not actually much in the way of Carole King, but great songs from our youth. It was fun to notice that we were all singing along. Yes, this is our kind of music!

When the group had finished their performance we stayed around to listed to Clique. I think they are very good, and also play my kind of music.

When we were dancing it struck me that among the 15 people on the dance floor (out of a total of 2691 passengers on the ship) 6 were from our table. That’s quite impressive.

Later there were only 7 of us on the dance floor, 6 from our table and one lone man who reminds me of Mark Twain. I think we picked a good table!

On leaving the Queens Room there was certainly evidence that the cruise was over for some.

When we returned to our stateroom there was a card in the slot outside our door. An invitation to dine with the captain? No, it was a card telling us what our table will be for dinner for the next 7 days. And it wasn’t table 300.

This absolutely won’t do. I love our table, why on earth would they split us up. We really aren’t that noisy are we?

I resolved to have words with the Maitre d’ in the morning.

I went out on the balcony. It was a hot and steamy night, more like being in the midst of the tropics than off the coast of New England if you ask me. However, it was very still and peaceful, with the moon trying to shine through the haze. It may be peaceful now, but tomorrow in Manhattan will be something completely different!